Improving internal collaboration has been the driving idea behind Dynamics CRM Activity Feeds. Even though the efficient usage of stream-like notifications may not be immediately obvious to users who’ve come to think of CRM data as permanent records presented in views, they provide a great enhancement on top of the existing customer data that focuses on answering the “what’s going on right now?” question, rather than the “what/who/how much” types of queries that CRM systems typically have focused on. Joel Lindstrom wrote a great article on the Customer Effective blog about how Activity Feeds are different from RSS feeds, which I recommend everyone to read.

Originally launched in the Q4 2011 Service Update (R7), the Activity Feeds solution is about to receive some enhancements in the upcoming R8 release that will allow users to better filter the content of their wall and also click “like” on posts. (Note: contrary to some comments, the “unlike” feature will most likely be simply the undo action of “like”, rather than a real “thumbs down” reaction.) Compared to other social business applications like Yammer, there still doesn’t seem to be built-in support for features such as groups or hashtags that we’ve come accustomed to use on many platforms. I’ve already written about a DIY approach for leveraging custom groups to follow posts on specific topics. Next, I thought I’d see how we could make use of the hashtag concept in Dynamics CRM.

What’s a #hashtag & what’s it good for?

Whether you’re an active Twitter user or not, it’s likely you’ve come across a person using the # sign in his or her online writing. What started out as a user driven policy of grouping tweets has later turned into a whole movement that’s gotten both users as well as commercial entities get very interested on following, measuring and encouraging the use of #hashtags on social media channels.

Twitter allows the users to click on hashtags turned into hyperlinks, thus enabling them to view all recent posts containing the same hashtag. Although Dynamics CRM is a flexible platform for LoB application development, tweaking the default Activity Feeds solution web resources to support this kind of filter functionality wouldn’t be exactly a walk in the park. However, we can certainly explore the concept and see what else the platform might have available for us that could make the Activity Feeds more intelligent. Hmm, how about workflows?

While the post box on a wall doesn’t currently allow us to include any other “magic characters” apart from the @ symbol used for performing mentions, the pound sign does have one clear advantage: it’s rarely used for other purposes than a hashtag (you might have the occasional shouts of “we are #1!” by excited sales reps appear on the wall after they close a deal, but that’s about it). This means we can quite safely use the # symbol as an identifier for our own little magic words.

Triggering processes from wall posts

Suppose you’re browsing through your personal wall on a Windows Phone 7.5 mobile while sipping on a Venti Latte at Starbucks, utilizing the free Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile app. You spot an item in your feed that you want to take note for further action once you’re back at your office desk. How are you going to do that?

While an email inbox is hardly a good way to manage a list of open tasks, Activity Feeds are even worse as action items, because they’re not even meant to be persistent records with read/unread status or flags/categories. The stream flows on as other CRM users perform actions such as winning opportunities and solving support incidents, which means that the item you spotted while enjoying your coffee may well be buried into the depths of history the next time you glance at your wall. Posts are merely notifications about something, not the object itself.

Instead of resorting to disconnected manual notes, what you could do is track the regarding record of the interesting wall post as a new task on your own list of CRM activities. All we need is the creation of a very simple workflow rule to achieve this. Create a new workflow process on the Post entity and mark it to be started whenever a new Post record is created.

What the hashtag concept will be used for is evaluating the content of a Post and seeing if the workflow process should be run or not. In our example, let’s use the hashtag #task to identify a Post which we would like to trigger the creation of a new task record. You might also want to check that the Post source is Manual Post instead of Auto Post (more about that later).

In your workflow rule definition, create a new task record and insert the contents of your post in the subject line. Set the regarding field to be the RegardingObjectId of the Post, owner as the person who created the Post, and a due date of 1 Day After Created On. Save your process, activate it and you’re all set.

Just type #task and let the system take care of the rest

In our example, we’ve spotted a Post regarding a new opportunity record. (Ok, so we’re doing this from the web client and not the mobile one, since believe it or not, screen capture on WP7 requires an unlocked device!) We want to mark an action item on the record for us, so we post a new item on the record wall, using the hashtag we defined: “#task Ask Chris for customer references”. Please note that simply commenting a Post will not trigger a workflow, since the PostComment entity is not available for workflows (bummer), so make sure to type a completely new Post on the item of interest.

After the Post is submitted to CRM database, the workflow is triggered and a new task will have been created on you My Activities view in a matter of seconds. Should you ignore your CRM list once you return to the office (shame on you!), the due date reminder we set on the task will cause your Outlook (and probably also your mobile phone) to alert you about the action item you created for yourself.

Drive any process with #hashtags

As you might know, the free mobile client does not allow you to create or update any CRM records, you can only read them on your mobile phone (unless you want to open the somewhat less pretty Mobile Express client). The only exception is Activity Feed Posts, which you can type on your Windows Mobile device and get the data updated into CRM in real time. Together with the creative use of hashtags and workflow processes, we can actually trigger also some other data entry and updates while on the road, as you saw from the #task example.

While you can’t create a workflow that would update the parent object of the Post, you can create new child items for it. In the example below, we’re creating a new case by using the #case hashtag.

The steps of the workflow process configuration are as follows:

Check if the Post contains the text #case

Create a new case record, set the title to post text, set customer as the RegardingObjectId(Post)

Create a queue item for the new case and move it to the Support queue for CSR’s to start working on

Wait for the case status to change from active to something else

Create a new post on the customer wall, containing a summary of the information recorded on the case after its creation

To finish the process with confidence on both sides, also send a direct email to the person who initiated the case creation with his/her wall post

All this process data neatly managed inside Dynamics CRM, just because you typed “#case Send an evaluation license of Product X to customer” on a record wall, with a mobile phone on your one hand and the latte on the other. You might as well have used a similar process to open a new opportunity and start your sales process automation tasks, with a predefined product specific hashtag like #opp_prodX_3m, if you really wanted to impress your colleagues that haven’t yet figured out why Activity Feeds and Auto Posts are a true productivity boost rather than just another new inbox to process.

A final word of warning: since you probably don’t want a workflow generated Post to trigger any new workflows accidentally, it’s a good idea to always set the right Post Source value (Auto Post, Manual Post) and also filter these in your workflow conditions. As an example, if you post “#case Customer asks for refund” and then later on use it as the case title that gets inserted into a new Post, you’ll soon be stuck in a loop of each case resolution creating a new case…

This is my first post on news and gossip that the eXtreme CRM 2012 Berlin conference brought to us. As there’s so many posts out there already that review the contents of the Q2 2012 Service Update (aka Dynamics CRM R8), I’m going to try and reflect on the topics based on my own observations and questions that these latest announcements have brought up. The first stop is mobile CRM.

Every consultant knows that Microsoft’s initial offering, the Dynamics CRM Mobile Express client, wasn’t really something you wanted to draw the customers’ attention to. It was just barely good enough to tick the feature box of “yes, we have mobile CRM”. On a non-touch smartphone like the popular business products from Nokia or RIM the user experience might have matched the native apps and device capabilities, but in the age of the iPhone this wasn’t at all what the users had come to expect from their mobile apps.

When Microsoft released the new Windows Phone 7 client application in CRM R7 release (2011 Q4 Service Update), we saw a glimpse of a brighter mobile future, but there was still hardly reason for true celebration. Ok, so we had a mobile optimized client now available, but it had it’s issues:

Only available for one niche (yet growing) smartphone platform

No ability to create or update any CRM records (except Activity Feed posts)

No offline support

The path towards a credible mobile offering would have been quite long for Microsoft to walk all on its own. Therefore it wasn’t really a surprise that they chose to team up with an existing partner and rebrand their mobile applications and services to the new “CRM Anywhere” solution (which is still officially called Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile). Out of all the possible mobile CRM ISV’s out there, their partner of choice turned out to be CWR Mobility.

This could of course be seen as a big blow to the other Dynamics CRM mobile ISV’s, who now have to compete against Microsoft’s own offering. However, in the long term this may actually be a positive turn of events for the whole ecosystem. The fact that there will be an official mobile app available from Microsoft to all the major smartphone platforms will surely drive up customer awareness as well as interest towards the possible use cases for “CRM on the road”.

Considering how much talk there’s been around the mobile use of CRM applications in the past few years, in my opinion we haven’t yet seen it really bloom the way many of us would have expected it to. I think one of the reasons is that mobile CRM has often been considered mainly as “CRM lite” that offers a subset of the features the full application delivers, for those awkward moments when your “CRM full” is not available to you. If mobile CRM is an optional feature that does not tie into the processes you absolutely need to execute, how likely is it that companies will choose to invest in such an additional cost factor? Ben Mitchell from TenDigits said it really well in his presentation:

“You’ve got a perfectly working address book on your phone already. If that’s all you’re trying to replace with mobile CRM, it’s always going to be too expensive. Always attach the price of a mobile CRM solution to the business value the customer is trying to achieve by deploying the solution. Mobile functionality pricing must be delivered in the context of business objectives, not just as a last minute addition to the quotation.”

Mobile CRM is like Social CRM in this sense: companies know why they need to embrace it sooner or later, but they’re still having difficulties in articulating exactly how they plan to go about it. As the limitations of available software are quickly fading away, the focus on real life use cases must rise on top. No, mobile CRM isn’t just about replicating the desktop experience on a smaller device. It must support the mode of working in infrequent bursts and dealing with specific scenarios, such as order entry or survey answer recording while the user is at the customer’s site. The UI needs to be optimized for the process in question, not just equipped with big icons to be poked with your fingers. Whether it’s going to be packaged apps like the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile growing beyond their current feature sets in customizability, platforms like the Resco Mobile CRM Studio gaining popularity as the basis for mobile app development, or even a future release of a HTML5 compliant version of the core Dynamics CRM browser app stealing the show with responsive web design, the playing field for a true CRM Anywhere solution that takes the “mobile first” thinking into everyday practice still looks wide open to me.

One interesting thing to keep an eye on is what’s going to happen to the Microsoft developed Windows Phone 7 CRM client. The R8 release preview guide states that there will not yet be offline functionality available for Windows Phone devices when the new service launches. This means that Microsoft Dynamics CRM will initially work better on pretty much any other mobile platforms compared to Microsoft Windows Phone 7 (doh!). I’m assuming that the current client version will receive some minor feature updates (new Activity Feeds filters etc.) but a full integration into the CWR Mobile platform will take more time. I’ve noticed in some occasions the WP7 client has actually been referred to as the “Activity Feeds Mobile App”, but I’m not sure if Microsoft could get away with renaming product X to product Y, then launching a new product X and charging extra money for it.

This leads us to the pricing model. Whereas the Windows Phone 7 client is a free download from the Marketplace, the CWR clients are based on a subscription fee. A company who buys licenses for Dynamics CRM, be it on-premises or CRM Online, will not receive any mobile client functionality as a part of the core product. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile will therefore remain as an add-on that customers must purchase licenses for separately. Considering the price is $30 per user per month, compared to the base product price of CRM Online of $44, this means in many cases not all CRM users will be given mobile client licenses. Or perhaps they’ll just be given a midprice Windows Phone device, such as the Nokia Lumia 710, and access to the free WP7 version of Dynamics CRM Mobile. With a number of Dynamics CRM apps already out there in iOS and Android marketplaces that any user can purchase for themselves and point it to a CRM Online or IFD organization, I’m not even sure companies can effectively standardize on a single official mobile app anymore, thanks to the BYOD culture and shadow IT.

The official Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile service won’t be able to match the 40 markets / 41 languages level of the core CRM product, as it will initially be available only in 24 markets and 10 languages. The explanation offered by Microsoft was that there are such regulatory limitations for mobile services in many markets that they simply can’t roll out their mobile CRM offering as quickly as a cloud app like CRM Online. We’ll see how fast they can catch up and bring the service to markets like Finland. It will also be interesting to see whether the initial unavailability will simply mean the lack of local languages or if MS will actually not offer the mobile app for download at all in these tier 2 regions’ marketplaces. I sure hope it won’t be the latter option, even if it would mean I’d have to temporarily return from WP7 to Android for doing proper presales demos of the new mobile service with offline capability. The sacrifices one needs to make for the love of CRM… 😉

Continuing with the format introduced in 2009, this year’s Microsoft Convergence for the EMEA region was split into three locations: London, Prague and The Hague. Out of all the options, Prague fit our schedules the best, so that became our destination of choice to hear the latest news and buzz around Microsoft Dynamics products.

With the fairly recent release of Dynamics CRM 2011 public beta, there was certainly a lot for Microsoft to present on the CRM front. Having been working with the product since CTP3 already, I wasn’t expecting too many surprises for myself in the CRM 2011 session contents. It’s still interesting to observe what is being said about the new release and how the customers and partners react to it. There is such a wealth of new, important features included in CRM 2011 (see my walkthrough slides for starters) that you can’t really construct the one right pitch for the product. You could say that there’s something for everyone.

We saw the first glimpse of CRM 2011 during Kirill’s keynote, when Reuben Krippner showed a bit of Process Dialogs in the Dynamic Business demonstration. From there on, Reuben was a busy man, since he was giving demos in the next four consecutive CRM sessions on the agenda. Great job pulling it off, Reuben! Let’s hope Liverpool picks up their pace in the Premier League, so we can see some more of them in future CRM demos 😉

Barry Givens held the last CRM session of the day, focusing on data visualization in CRM 2011. Not like we hadn’t seen the charts a few times already during the day, but hey, I always enjoy hearing Barry talk about his favorite topic i.e. analytics in CRM. While the out-of-the-box charts in CRM 2011 certainly do deliver value, you should really look at the broader picture of what the visualization features introduced in the new version truly mean in terms of customization and application design. The charts are actually one alternative method of navigation, due to their tight integration with grids and the drill-down capability. They can be embedded not only on grids but also forms (through sub-grids), bringing visualizations to every part of the CRM UI. Oh, and don’t forget to check out my post about editing the .NET Chart Controls for CRM 2011. Dashboards, on the other hand, are not just an item in the main menu but rather a new form type. By allowing flexible arrangement of embedded components like grids, charts and web resources, the dashboard forms might actually one day become the next generation UI for navigating in Dynamics CRM. You know, something for the future ahead of us when every modern web app must be built in RIA fashion, with Silverlight controls and what have you.

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